Second, the most important methodological challenge for the future is to extend my book’s narrative, verbal, qualitative analysis by a more rigorous quantitative analysis. As I mentioned in my book’s introduction, a recent trend in some of the social sciences, especially in economics and economic history and some areas of psychology, has been to replace narratives based on single case studies with approaches combining quantitative data, graphs, large sample sizes, statistical tests of significance, natural experiments, and operationalized measures. By “operationalized measures,” I mean translating a verbal concept into something that can be measured by a series of operations on presumed correlates or expressions of that concept.
The two papers by Jones and Olken discussed earlier in this chapter are examples of that approach. They replaced single case studies of what some particular leader did or didn’t do with an analysis of 57 or 298 leaders simultaneously. They took advantage of natural experiments in order to compare outcomes associated with the presence and the absence of a particular leader, by examining countries before and after a leader had died of a natural death, or else countries in which an assassination attempt had failed or succeeded. Finally, they expressed putative outcome variables operationally either by means of measurable numerical quantities (e.g., economic growth rates), or else by means of defined scales (e.g., a scale of governmental institutions ranging from autocracies with minimal constraints on a leader to democracies with maximal constraints on a leader).
In order to apply that approach to my study of national crises, we would need operationalized measures of the outcomes and of the postulated factors that I discussed, including “acknowledgment,” “acceptance of responsibility,” “national identity,” “freedom from constraints,” “patience at dealing with failure,” “flexibility,” “honest self-appraisal,” “change or lack of change,” and “success or failure at resolving a national crisis.” Possible starting points for developing such operationalized measures include the data in social science databases, such as the World Values Survey led by Ronald Inglehart, the Economic Values Survey, the European Social Survey, the Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific, and books by Geert Hofstede, Michael Minkov, and others. I put effort into trying to use these data sources to devise operationalized measures for some of my variables, before reluctantly concluding that that would require a large project beyond the scope of this book’s narrative survey, which already took me six years even without devising operationalized measures. Such quantitative approaches need to be developed not only for the national crises that are this book’s focus, but also for the individual crises that I discussed in Chapter 1. While psychologists have operationalized and tested a few of the variables postulated in that chapter as affecting the outcomes of individual crises, much more remains to be done even for individual crises. Hence the same limitations of narrative style that apply to my study of national crises, and to most historical studies of leadership, also apply to most studies of individual crises.
What can we learn from history? This is a general question, of which a specific sub-question is: what can we learn from our seven nations’ responses to the crises discussed in this book? A nihilistic answer is: nothing! History’s course, say many historians, is too complicated, the outcome of too many independent uncontrolled variables and unforeseeable changes, to permit us to learn anything from the past. In June 1944, who could have predicted correctly the post-war map of Eastern Europe? It would have turned out to be very different, if the would-be assassin Claus von Stauffenberg had succeeded in pushing his briefcase carrying a time bomb 20 inches closer to Hitler on July 20, 1944, and if as a result Hitler had been killed rather than just been wounded on that date, when Soviet armies were still beyond Germany’s frontiers, instead of Hitler’s actual suicide on April 30, 1945, when Soviet armies had conquered Berlin and all of Eastern Europe and Eastern Germany.
Yes, of course much about history is unpredictable. Nevertheless, there are two sorts of lessons to be learned. But first, as background, let’s consider corresponding lessons to be drawn from understanding of individual people, because (once again) there are parallels between the histories of nations and the lives of individual people.
What, if anything, can we learn from the life histories and biographies of individual people? Aren’t people, like nations, so complicated, so different from one another, and so subject to unforeseeable events that it’s difficult to predict the behavior of one person, let alone to extrapolate from one person’s behavior to the behavior of another person? Of course not! Despite the difficulties, most of us still find it useful to devote a large fraction of our lives to trying to anticipate the likely future behavior of individuals close to us, based on our understanding their personal life histories. In addition, training enables psychologists, and “people skills” enable many of us laypeople, to generalize our experience of people whom we already know, so as to anticipate the behavior of new people whom we encounter. That’s why it’s instructive to read biographies even of people whom we can never encounter, and thereby to broaden our database for understanding human behavior.
I write these lines just after spending an evening with two women friends, one of them a psychologically naïve optimist in her 20’s, the other a perceptive person in her 70’s. The younger woman was devastated by the recent break-up of her relationship with a fascinating man who had seemed so caring, but who suddenly, after several years, cruelly and without warning abandoned the woman. But as the younger woman related her story, even before reaching the devastating denouement, the older woman (without having met the man) recognized the warning signs that the man was a charming but destructive narcissist, of whom she had come to understand quite a few. That illustrates why experience of a wide range of people, and reflecting on them, are useful. There really are broad themes in human behavior, even though everyone differs in detail from everyone else.
What are corresponding types of lessons to be drawn from attention to human history? One type consists of specific lessons about the likely future behavior of a particular country, based on understanding the history of that country. For instance, Finland is a small democratic country that works hard to maintain good relations with its autocratic neighbor Russia, maintains a well-trained army, and doesn’t count on other countries to protect it. The reasons for those Finnish policies become clear from Finland’s recent history. Anyone ignorant of Finnish history is unlikely to understand why Finland pursues and will continue to pursue those policies—e.g., anyone like me when I first visited Finland in 1959, ignorant of Finnish history, and asked my Finnish host why Finland didn’t stand up to Soviet pressure in the belief that the U.S. would protect Finland.
Another type of lesson to be drawn from history consists of general themes. Again, take Finland and Russia as an example. Along with features specific to Finland and Russia, their relationship exemplifies a general theme: the dangers hanging over small countries near aggressive large countries. There is no universal solution to that danger. It’s the subject of one of the earliest, and still one of the most cited and most gripping, passages in written history: the pages of Book 5 of the history of the Peloponnesian War, composed by the Athenian historian Thucydides in the fifth century BC. Thucydides described how the citizens of the small Greek island of Melos responded to pressure from the powerful Athenian Empire. In a passage now known as the Melian Dialogue, Thucydides reconstructed the gut-wrenching negotiations between the Melians and the Athenians: the Melians bargaining for their freedom and their lives, attempting to convince the Athenians not to use force; and the Athenians warning the Melians to be realistic. Thucydides then briefly related the outcome: the Melians refused Athenian demands, just as the Finns two millennia later initially refused Soviet demands; the Athenians besieged Melos; the Melians resisted successfully for some time; but they eventually had to surrender; and—the Athenians killed all the Melian men and enslaved all the women and children.
Of course, the Fi
nns did not end up massacred and enslaved by the Russians, illustrating that the Melian dilemma’s outcome and the best strategy vary greatly from case to case. Nevertheless, there is a universal lesson: small countries threatened by large countries should remain alert, consider alternative options, and appraise those options realistically. While this lesson may seem so embarrassingly obvious as to be not worth mentioning, sadly it has often been ignored. It was ignored by the Melians; it was ignored by the Paraguayans, who waged a disastrous war against the combined forces of the much larger Brazil and Argentina plus Uruguay from 1865 to 1870, resulting in the deaths of 60% of Paraguay’s population; it was ignored by Finland in 1939; it was ignored by Japan in 1941, when Japan simultaneously attacked the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, and China while Russia was hostile; and it was ignored by Ukraine in its recent disastrous confrontation with Russia.
If I’ve now persuaded you not to dismiss the possibility that we can learn something useful from history, what can we learn specifically from the histories of the national crises discussed in this book? Many general themes have emerged. One set of themes consists of the behaviors that have helped our seven nations to deal with crises. Those behaviors include: acknowledging when one’s nation is in a crisis; accepting responsibility for change, rather than just blaming other nations and retreating into victimhood; building a fence to identify the national feature(s) needing to be changed, so as not to be overwhelmed with a sense that nothing about one’s country is working adequately; identifying other countries from which to seek help; identifying other countries’ models that have solved problems similar to the problems now facing one’s own country; being patient, and recognizing that the first solution attempted may not work and that several successive attempts may be necessary; reflecting on which core values continue to be appropriate, and which are no longer appropriate; and practicing honest self-appraisal.
Another theme concerns national identity. Young countries need to construct a national identity, as Indonesia, Botswana, and Rwanda have been doing. For older countries, national identities may need revision, as may core values; Australia illustrates such revision in recent times.
Still another theme involves uncontrollable factors that influence crisis outcomes. A nation is stuck with its actual experience of previous crisis-solving, and with its geopolitical constraints. More experience can’t suddenly be constructed, and constraints can’t be wished away. But a nation can still take them realistically into account, as did Germany under Bismarck and Willy Brandt.
Pessimists may respond to these suggestions by protesting: “How absurdly obvious! We don’t need Jared Diamond’s book to tell us to practice honest self-appraisal, to look to other countries for models, to avoid retreating into victimhood, and so on!” No, we do need a book, because it’s undeniable that those “obvious” requirements have so often been ignored, and are still so often ignored today. People who paid with their lives for ignoring “obvious” requirements in the past included all Melian men, hundreds of thousands of Paraguayans, and millions of Japanese. People whose ignoring of “obvious” requirements threatens their well-being today include my fellow several hundred million Americans.
A pessimist might also respond, “Yes, sadly we do often ignore the obvious, but a book can’t change that blindness. Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue has already been available to us for over two millennia, yet nations still make the same mistakes. What good can yet another book do?” Well, there are encouraging reasons why we authors keep trying. More people are literate readers today than ever before in world history. We know far more about world history, and can make much better documented arguments, than did Thucydides. More countries are democracies, which means that more citizens can have political input, than at any time in the past. While ignorant leaders abound, some national leaders read widely, and it’s now easier for them to learn from history than in the past. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to encounter heads of state, and many other politicians, who told me of having been influenced by my own previous books. The whole world now faces global problems—but within the past century, and especially within recent decades, the world has been developing institutions for addressing global problems.
Those are among my reasons for not listening to the pessimists and giving up hope, but for continuing to write about history, in order that we’ll have the option of learning from history, if we so choose. In particular, crises have often challenged nations in the past. They are continuing to do so today. But our modern nations and our modern world don’t have to grope in the dark as they try to respond. Familiarity with changes that did or didn’t work in the past can serve us as a guide.
PLATE 0.1. Boston’s Cocoanut Grove fire of November 28, 1942 killed 492 people in a crowded nightclub, and thereby led to the foundation of crisis therapy.
PLATE 2.1. A sign in the Finnish language, incomprehensible to non-Finns, but a focus of Finland’s national identity.
PLATE 2.2. Finland in the Winter War called up as soldiers not just 20-year-olds, but also young teen-agers as well as older men and women.
PLATE 2.3. Viipuri, at that time Finland’s second-largest city, under Russian bombardment in February 1940.
PLATE 2.4. The same scene as Plate 2.3, but decades later: former Finnish Viipuri, now a Russian city.
PLATE 2.5. Finnish soldiers mounted on skis, wearing white uniforms for camouflage, advancing through the forests against Soviet columns tied to roads.
PLATE 2.6. A Soviet motorized unit, ambushed and destroyed by Finnish ski troops.
PLATE 2.7. Finnish children evacuated to Sweden, in history’s largest wartime evacuation of children.
PLATE 3.1. The shogun, actual ruler of Japan until his overthrow launched the Meiji Restoration.
PLATE 3.2. Japan’s emperor who succeeded to the throne in 1867 and presided over the Meiji Era of selective change.
PLATE 3.3. Japan’s Iwakura Mission to the U.S. and Europe in 1871–1873 to learn about Western practices. Already, all except one wore Western clothes.
PLATE 3.4. Samurai swordsmen, the traditional private militia of Japan until the Meiji Restoration.
PLATE 3.5. A Japanese sports team of the Meiji Era, already in Western garb.
PLATE 3.6. Japanese visitors to the U.S. in the Meiji Era, already in Western garb.
PLATE 3.7. A Russian battleship sunk in harbor by Japanese torpedoes in 1904 at the outset of the Russo-Japanese War.
PLATE 3.8. The 1905 Battle of Tsushima Strait, in which the Japanese navy annihilated a Russian fleet.
PLATE 3.9. German colonial soldiers captured by Japanese troops in 1914.
PLATE 4.1. Salvador Allende, Chile’s democratically elected president who died during the coup of 1973.
PLATE 4.2. A Soviet nuclear missile base under construction in Cuba in 1962: a main reason why the U.S. and the Chilean right, center, and armed forces were adamantly determined to thwart President Allende’s announced goal of installing a Marxist government in Chile.
PLATE 4.3. Chilean soldiers and tanks carrying out the September 11, 1973 coup in Chile’s capital city of Santiago.
PLATE 4.4. General Augusto Pinochet (seated and wearing sunglasses), Chile’s military dictator after the 1973 coup.
PLATE 4.5. The famous leftist Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, whom the military junta killed after the 1973 coup by chopping off all of his fingers and shooting him 44 times.
PLATE 4.6. A poster of the successful 1988 “No!” campaign opposed to the re-election of General Pinochet as Chile’s president.
PLATE 4.7. General Pinochet returning to Chile in 2000, standing up from the wheelchair to which he was supposedly confined for medical reasons, and greeting Chilean generals present to congratulate him.
PLATE 5.1. Sukarno, Indonesia’s founding president.
PLATE 5.2. Sukarno (center) sitting with the leaders of China and Egypt, pursuing Third World anti-colonial politics.
PLATE 5.3. Suharto, Indonesia
’s military dictator and eventually seven-term president after the failed 1965 coup.
PLATE 5.4. Indonesian soldiers rounding up presumed communists after the failed 1965 coup.
PLATE 5.5. Indonesia’s huge Pancasila Monument, commemorating the seven generals killed during the failed 1965 coup.
PLATE 5.6. The skyscrapers of modern Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.
Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis Page 45
